Monday, July 6, 2015

On WUWT there is an article by Christopher Monckton (archived here). It's a short article (for him), in which he fudges numbers and mixes up concepts. Anthony wrote what Roy Spencer excitedly thinks is a very clever headline: 2°C or not 2°C–that is the question. Is it the question or is the question something else? It turns out the question was something else - and the answer at WUWT was wrong as usual.

Staying within the CO2 emissions budget

Limiting cumulative CO2 emissions over 2000-50 to 1,000 Gt CO2 yields a 25% probability of warming exceeding 2°C—and a limit of 1,440 Gt CO2 yields a 50% probability—given a representative estimate of the distribution of climate system properties. As known 2000-06 CO2 emissions were ~234 Gt CO2, less than half the proven economically recoverable oil, gas and coal reserves can still be emitted up to 2050 to achieve such a goal.

Recent G8 Communiques envisage halved global GHG emissions by 2050, for which we estimate a 12-45% probability of exceeding 2°C—assuming 1990 as emission base year and a range of published climate sensitivity distributions. Emissions levels in 2020 are a less robust indicator, but for the scenarios considered, the probability of exceeding 2°C rises to 53–87% if global GHG emissions are still more than 25% above 2000 levels in 2020.

The authors say that from 2000 to 2006 there were 234 Gt CO2 emissions. From 2007 to 2013 there was another 236 Gt, which makes it 470 Gt. Last September it was estimated that at least 40Gt would be emitted in 2014, so by 2020 it's probably reasonable to assume there'll be another 280Gt, which would add to 750 Gt from 2000 to 2020. This leaves just 250 Gt to keep within the 1,000 Gt limit and a 25% probability of exceeding 2°C. If emissions were held steady at current emissions (2014), then that would leave around 6-7 years after which we'd need to drop immediately to zero emissions. In other words we could emit 40 Gt a year until August 2026 and then stop all emissions completely. Jumping from 40Gt / year to zero is completely unrealistic, so we've got to phase down immediately - starting now.

If we want to toss the dice and gamble that 1,440 Gt would give us a 50:50 chance, then we can gamble on another 18.8 years - to around 2039. At that time we'd have to stop all emissions just for a 50:50 chance of warming to 2°C.

Below is Figure 3 from the paper, showing the probability of staying below 2°C for different cumulative emissions from 2000:

Figure 3 | The probability of exceeding 2°C warming versus CO2 emitted in the first half of the twenty-first century. a, Individual scenarios’ probabilities of exceeding 2°C for our illustrative default (dots; for example, for SRES B1, A2, Stern and other scenarios shown in Fig. 2) and smoothed (local linear regression smoother) probabilities for all climate sensitivity distributions (numbered lines, see Supplementary Information for data sources). The proportion of CMIP3 AOGCMs26 and C4MIP carbon-cycle8 model emulations exceeding 2 uC is shown as black dashed line. Coloured areas denote the range of probabilities (right) of staying below 2 uC in AR4 terminology, with the extreme upper distribution (12) being omitted. Total CO2 emissions already emitted3 between 2000 and 2006 (grey area) and those that could arise from burning available fossil fuel reserves, and from land use activities between 2006 and 2049 (median and 80% ranges, Methods). Source: Meinshausen09

In case you are wondering about time frames of warming, the authors state:

We chose the twenty-first century as our time horizon, as this time frame is sufficiently long to determine which emission scenarios will probably lead to a global surface warming below 2°C. Under these scenarios, temperatures have stabilized or peaked by 2100, while warming continues under higher scenarios.

In other words, as long as we keep to the budgets and cut emissions so that we stick below 2°C of warming, it will all happen this century and then taper off. If we don't, then it will keep getting hotter this century and beyond. Here's a chart from the paper, showing our temperature options:

We can choose to limit the rise in global surface temperature to 2°C or a bit more, or we can choose to heat up the world to 5°C, 7°C and more.

Christopher Monckton fudges methods and data

I chose that paper because that's the one that WUWT chose to illustrate. Anthony Watts claimed:

This note by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley uses methods and data exclusively from mainstream climate science to constrain the interval of 21st-century global warming.

Did he use methods and data exclusively from mainstream climate science? Of course not. And who believes anything they read at WUWT anyway. Here is what Christopher did and claimed.

He wrote about climate sensitivity and put up lots of numbers. You wouldn't know from what Christopher wrote, but in the IPCC's AR4 report, the best estimate for climate sensitivity was given as "about 3°C" (SPM p12), while in AR5 no best estimate was provided.

Christopher decides that climate sensitivity in AR5 is 2.2°K. He pulled that number out of his hat. (AR5 states climate sensitivity lies between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, with no "best estimate".) Christopher then arbitrarily halved his 2.2°K to get 1.1°K, claiming that "only half of equilibrium warming will occur in the first 100 years after a forcing". Never mind that we've already had 150 years of forcing, and more than 60 years where human activities accounted for all of the net forcing. He then put "the remainder in the following century, by which time fossil fuels will approach exhaustion".

How convenient. You'll no doubt have noticed that not only did Christopher fudge all the numbers and time frames, he also jumped from climate sensitivity to temperature rise. He assumed one of the following:

after 560 ppm, 100% of the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuels will be absorbed by plants and oceans.

Even if half the emissions continue to be absorbed by the oceans and plants then atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise as long as we pour it into the air. And the chances of half of it continuing to be absorbed by surface processes gets less the more we emit, as discussed in the recent paper on oceans.

Christopher continued to wrongly conflate climate sensitivity with maximum warming, and wrote:

Remaining warming to equilibrium at 2.2 K above today would be spread over the subsequent 1000-3000 years (Solomon et al., 2009), allowing plenty of time for adaptation.

What Christopher Monckton got wrong

All these assumptions of Christopher's are wrong or questionable:

Christopher asserted that climate sensitivity is 2.2°K. It could be anywhere from 1.5°K to 4.5°K or higher.

Christopher wrongly assumed we will stop emitting CO2 when atmospheric concentration reaches 560 ppm. Since it's already more than 400 ppm, we'll have our work cut out over the next few years to get it to remain under 560 ppm

Christopher wrongly asserted that the temperature will only go up by half the end amount this century - that's not necessarily correct as can be seen by the chart above. It depends on how much CO2 we add to the atmosphere.

Christopher wrongly asserted that fossil fuels will run out before we reach a danger point. That's not correct either. Not by a long shot.

On the point of fossil fuel reserves, below is what was stated in Meinshausen09. Remember that to keep the risk of getting above 2°C to even 25%, the budget from 2000-2050 is just 1,000 Gt of CO2, and we've already spent more than half that budget.

We explored the consequences of burning all proven fossil fuel reserves (the fraction of fossil fuel resources that is economically recoverable with current technologies and prices: Fig. 3b and Methods). We derived a mid-estimate of 2,800 Gt CO2 emissions from the literature, with an 80%-uncertainty range of 2,541 to 3,089 Gt CO2. Emitting the carbon from all proven fossil fuel reserves would therefore vastly exceed the allowable CO2 emission budget for staying below 2°C.

From the WUWT comments

I didn't see anyone notice that Christopher assumed that we will stop emitting CO2 once it reaches 560ppm. Nor did I see anyone query his assumption that fossil fuels will run out before we get to 560 ppm CO2. I don't know if there is anyone left reading WUWT who has a brain or knows how to use it. Maybe the WUWT fans who use a few of their brain cells (are there any) don't bother reading articles by Christopher Monckton.

philincalifornia has noticed the condescending attitude of normal people towards the wilfully ignorant denialati, and that to burn up the planet is rightly framed as a moral issue:

July 4, 2015 at 11:20 am
Climate Policy – the greatest parasitic infection of humans ever. Not just in the minds of the pompous prats running around pretending to be our morally superior betters, but in the destruction of wealth and well-being for ALL of humanity.

Expat wants the oil and coal barons to keep control over carbon. He's probably a serf by nature:

Glenn999 is barely intelligible. I think he's arguing that an ice age cometh:

July 4, 2015 at 4:25 pm
I wonder…
What would be worse: to continue down the current path to insanity, with the resultant deaths caused by green policies, or,
to experience real solar-induced climate change that would immediately force people to reconsider CO2 reduction schemes?
Perhaps the survival instinct would kick in, and with this newly awakened awareness, humanity would embrace reality-based solutions. I think probably less dire for many more.

Louis Hunt doesn't read climate science. He seems to have picked up bits of nonsense from denialist interpreters of deniers' interpretations. (No, there won't be "runaway warming" on Earth and no scientist would claim that.)

July 4, 2015 at 11:41 am
When Gore and Hansen first began preaching against the sins of global warming, it was not just the warming caused by more CO2 that would be a problem. It was mostly the warming caused by positive feedbacks that would doom us all. The feedbacks, we were told, would eventually cause “runaway global warming” that would “boil” the oceans and turn us into Venus. But evidence of those positive feedbacks has yet to materialize. What steadily increasing CO2 over the past couple of decades, with very little warming, has shown us is that the feedbacks have not been positive. If anything, they are negative because we have not experienced the amount of warming that CO2 alone, without feedbacks, should produce. It was my impression that the main reason 2 degrees of warming would be dangerous was because of the positive feedbacks that would pile on later. So, if those positive feedbacks do not occur, why would another degree or two of warming be a problem?

July 4, 2015 at 12:44 pm
The key point about this posting is that it uses exclusively mainstream climate science from “official” sources. And yet it shows just 0.6 C warming this century, or 1.0 C at most. It will be intriguing to see whether the usual suspects are able to show that there is anything materially wrong with the argument and, therefore, with the conclusion.

co2isnotevil is perpetually amazed. He or she has a serious case of Dunning-Kruger-itis:

July 4, 2015 at 1:36 pm
A time constant greater than a century doesn’t make sense either. If the time constant was that long, we wouldn’t be seeing any differences between summer and winter, even at the poles where its dark for half the year. The satellite data tells us that the average ocean temperatures exhibit a seasonal variability of about 4C in the S hemisphere and about 5C in the N hemisphere for a net change of 1C p-p during a year. This indicates ocean time constants on the order of a year or two, but not centuries. The ebb and flow of ice is slower, but if you calculate the effect if all the ice was permanently gone, it would only be enough incremental input power to support about half of the global 3C rise claimed just from doubling CO2. Keep in mind that 2/3 of the ice is covered by clouds and the decrease in surface reflectivity has no effect.
It never ceases to amaze me how once they get an answer they want to see, they can no longer see the errors that led them to the wrong answer.

ristvan thinks there'll be a stadium wave of cooling, triangulated, despite the fact that it looks to be already disproven:

July 4, 2015 at 2:36 pm
I think your range is right. Three reasons. First, stadium wave and Arctic ice cycles both suggest a continuation of natural variation ‘cooling’ into the 2030’s. Too much to catch up thereafter. Second, the solar cycle quiet sun phase we seem to be entering. Third, atmospheric CO2 cannot double from here to 800ppm by 2100. FernandoLeanme is right. Gaia’s Limits contains exhaustive arguments and evidence from many sources. Oil, quite solid. Coal, fairly solid. Natural gas most uncertain, but then NG combustion emits the least CO2. So only some fraction (2/3? 3/4?) of the energy budget 70 year TCR of ~1.3 could happen by 2100, and that not via the linear 1%/year to doubling in 70 years that TCR assumes. So worst obswrvational case is TCR 1.3 times 0.75 CO2 = 0.97C by 2100. Hope these alternative perspectives will strengthen and enrich your conclusion by trianglation from different angles. Regards

craigm350 is convinced that its impossible to know anything about climate. It is all too uncertain. Nevertheless he is absolutely certain (p=0.99) that there is nothing to be concerned about. In other words he thinks our climate future is simultaneously absolutely certain and absolutely uncertain.

July 4, 2015 at 4:27 pm
SJW’s pull arguments out of their backsides. I see little evidence climate scientists do anything more, so arguing about ECS – angels on a pinhead – is little more than entertainment. We don’t know. We have far too crude measurement sticks. The amount is smaller than we can hope to measure (‘confidence’ in the existence of angels aside). All we do know is there is little if nothing to concern ourselves with. Never has. Never will. Can we move on to more serious things now than pointless philosophical arguments with the terms set by those in the pay of setting the parameters of said debate (about angels)? We will never burn – on this earth at least (fair skin expected). I hope we don’t freeze from ignorance.

78 comments:

Regarding the last one, it's interesting to see the acronym "SJW" -- usually that has to do with people who get bothered by misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc. And nothing to do with climate change.

(Of course, why social justice would be a bad thing is never explained.)

SJW (social justice warrior) is used to refer to a particular species of stereotypical indignant college freshman who see social injustice everywhere they look and shout about it online to feel like they are doing something important. Shades of gray are not their forte. Their brand of simplistic radicalism has been mocked for generations but the internet has given them all microphones that they crank to 11 and shout into. I am a pretty liberal buy but I find the talk of micro-aggression and militaristic PC views to be tiresome in the extreme.

pbjamm> originally, yes. now it's evolved into a sort of catch-all snarl term for "person who has said something vaguely left-wing online". try a few searches to see what i mean: Pope Francis is an SJW, for example, as is Obama. even the NRA are infected!

(a search for plain "sjw" is fairly instructive too: the first few pages of results provide an exciting cavalcade of MRAs, anti-feminists, homophobes, neo-Nazis, and a whole bunch of gamers crying that the horrible women are going to come and take away their make-believe guns.)

that said, it's quite amusing to see all these people getting head-explodingly outraged at other people's outrage :-)

"If we want to toss the dice and gamble that 1,440 Gt would give us a 50:50 chance, then we can gamble on another 18.8 years - to around 2039. At that time we'd have to stop all emissions just for a 50:50 chance of warming to 2°C."

There's a real issue with the setting of limits, and the reference to probabilities, and that is that the consequences of emissions increase with the amount of CO2 emitted no matter what the final sensitivity values are. Say, for example, that action was taken and warming was held to 1.8-1.9 C over pre-Industrial global mean. The results are still profoundly serious, and the more so for future generations who will have had little or nothing to do withe those emissions.

If emissions limits are to be selected they should be based on a parsimonious consideration of both probability intervals for sensitivity in response to emissions, and the likely biospheric (and physical realm) responses to warming. Currently this level of finesse is lacking from most government policies.

Without it we'll find ourselves like Wily Coyote having overshot the edge of a cliff, in that (unreal) moment before he plunges down, where he breaks the fourth wall with a bleak gaze full of the realisation that he's gone too far...

Agree, Bernard. I'm reminded of Judith Curry, who doesn't understand uncertainty though she uses the word a lot. She urged Atlanta to shut down when there was a 30% probability of roads icing up, but advocates for no mitigating action to curb CO2 emissions despite the extreme risk of increasing emissions.

How does this connect with Monckton's paper from January? I can't tell and it's early for me to be thinking but if it contradicts what he said there we can safely assume that he's given up on that damp squib.

@-" "only half of equilibrium warming will occur in the first 100 years after a forcing"."

Using Lord Monkton's simply irreducible logic that would mean we have seen less than half of the forced warming from the ~40% increase in CO2 over the last ~50 years.So if 0.8degC is less than half and the nest century would see the other half, then even if all CO2 emission stopped today we would still warm by at least 1.7degC

There seems to be an unstated assumption in all this that anything more than a century ahead is irrelevant. Given how important choices made in the PAST century have been in shaping the present this seems unlikely.

Good point, izen. As we've heard so frequently over the last year, it was just over 100 years ago that several European powers decided to roll the iron dice of war, the rest couldn't or wouldn't stop them, and we are still grappling with the unintended consequences, from an almost unbroken trail of lesser wars to the shift from democracy to corporatocracy. And their decisions were small beer to those we face now...

Bernard - Indeed, they talk about "staying under 2 degrees" as if 1.9 was consequence-free, and as though they were talking about a 100% chance of staying under.

And +1 for izen's CE 2100 point. It's one of my bugbears, and I'm always pushing for reference to plateau values rather than to date values, unless a cited date is directly related to a defensible plateau value.

I'm glad you noticed. Baed on the pervasive use of Alinsky's Laws of Radicals by those of you who still have faith in demonstrably broken science just because it fits a narrative, I'm flattered (rule 5 and rule 12).

Invoking Alinsky's rules are a rather parochial criticism of the way the climate issue is discussed. They are most applicable within the socio-political context of Chicago local politics. While they may work in desegregating schools in the US inner city, their application in other contexts seems arbitrary or metaphorical.

Perhaps the missing rule, which is a prominent part of the climate debate, is rule 0.Make your arguments evidence based.

Physical Laws violated to support a high sensitivity:COE (required positive fdeedback > 100%)Stefan-Boltzmann (denial of its applicability to the surface)Second Law (Hurricanes leave behind a cooler surface, rather than the warmer surface that the massive positive feedback from clouds, water vapor and latent heat would predict)

I only say that Alinsky's rules are being applied by warmists from personal experience where whenvever someone on your side can not answer to the science, they resort to personal attacks, rather than attempting to counter the science that disputes their claims

Co2isnotevil - Sorry, but references to your own website and text (palisad/George White) aren't what anyone would reasonably consider authoritative.

Your nonsense regarding radiative physics was discussed at some length here on SkS, as well as here - it doesn't look like your arguments have improved since then.

Example: Hurricanes (and thunderstorms) are heat engines driven by high sea surface temperatures and rising water vapor, moving energy from the surface to the atmosphere. That's high-school level weather. So of course they leave behind a cooler surface - there is no conflict whatsoever with the greenhouse effect, with water vapor feedback, or from the height-dependent feedback of clouds.

So tell us - which of Alinsky's rules encourages the promotion of complete non-scientific nonsense like your preceding comment?

Of course we can't even tell how mad co2isnotevil (Of ocurse it isn't, we know that already. But it can cause problems, the same way that water isn't evil but you don't want it flooding your house), because the first link they gave doesn't work. Or maybe the climate conspiracy stole it!!!

I shall leave it to you to work out which of the rules s routinely used by Watts, Ball, Monckton and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all at WUWT. Including you, CO2, including you (hint, begin with 13 as a good description of Mann's inhumanity to Mann at the world's most visited disinformation site).

You apparently don't understand the applicability of Alinski's rules. The reason to use them is when your agenda is otherwise unsupportable. Watt's only agenda is to propagate the truth about climate science and get past the bombastic rhetoric coming from those who believe in the IPCC's self serving consensus.

I have yet to find anyone on your side of the debate, including well known scientists like Trenberth, Schlesinger, Hansen and others who can make an intellegent case based on first principles physics to justify how the sensitivity can be as high as claimed. How can any sane person, especially a scientist. believe that 1 W?m^2 of incremental post albedo input from the Sun can result in 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions consequential to the 0.8C temperature rise claimed to result.

Those of you who claim positive feedback are clueless for if each W/m^2 of forcing from the Sun resulted in 4.3W/m^2 of surface emissions, the surface would be close to the boiling point of water.

Those of you who claim the incremental sensitivity is much larger than the average sensivity of 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing are equally clueless by ignoring the T^4 dependency on Planck emissions and temperature requiring the incremental sensitivity to be less than the average fotr all W/m^2 that preceeded.

The number of physical LAWS that are denied in order to support an insanely high sensitivity is astounding. But then again, when partisan politics gets involved with anything, the first causilty is always objectivity.

"I have yet to find anyone on your side of the debate, including well known scientists like Trenberth, Schlesinger, Hansen and others who can make an intellegent case..."

An explanation that fits all the data we have would be that its due to an intellectual deficiency on your own part. Of course, if you come back when your Nobel prize winning refutation of climate science is published, I will be lavish in my apologies.

BTW, no Noble Prize in physics is warranted. All I have done is apply basic first principles physical LAWS to the climate system. The only reason to give a Noble Prize for fixing climate science would be to offset the one they gave to the IPCC and Gore for fear mongering, but that would be the political prize and not the physics prize, so I'm not at all interested.

It's not an ad hom if you actually "are" mentally deficient c02. As for your refutations, you've only shown how little physics you actually understand. Required positive feedback over 100%? Hurricanes and the second Law? Stefan-Boltzmann not being properly applied? Where do you get this shit? Very entertaining however. You must be the "best" the WTFUWT could send today.

Milicent, my father in law was canvassing for UKiP. He asked if he could count on my vote. When I told him that their science policies were 100% anti scientific, he put me down as a definite no. He hasn't been round since. For CO2's benefit, the Greens got the same answer for GMOs and other science policies but at least their climate policy was evidence based.

The data is from GISS. All I've done is present it in a meaningful way. The fact that their data proves them wrong shouldn't be held against me.

I also should point out that whatever unknown physics you think you understand and that supports a high sensitivity, it's never been articulated in the literature simply because it doesn't exist. Even if it did, the system still must conform to known physics.

The assumtion that 100% positive feedback generates infinite gain (the so called runaway GHG effect) is based on the assumption of powered gain from Bode's analysis which Schlesinger used to justify massive positive feedback. The climate has no external source of power and rather than measure the input to see how much output to deliver from an infinite source, input is consumed to produce the output and this COE constraint along with the demonstrable fact that only half of the energy from the photons absorbed by the atmosphere is returned to the surface, while the remaining half must be emitted to space limits the gain to 2 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing (about 1/2 of the IPCC lower bound). Anything sensitivity greater than this must violate COE.

Trenberth's conflation of energy transported by photons and energy transported by matter, whose only purpose is to provide the wiggle room to support an insanely high sensitivity, is what's confusing you. Even though he does say that the SB relationship is responsible for radiant emissions from the surface, he goes on to claim that non radiant source of energy entering the atmosphere are equivalent to photonds and also subject to GHG effects. This lumping of energy requires more emissions than SB dictates, relative to the average surface temperature, thus in violation of this law.

Consensus climate science lclaims that water vapor, clouds and latent heat all combine to produce massive positive feedback. These factors are behind the global heat engine that drives weather. A Hurricane is a self contained, maximally efficient form of this heat engine and if the combined effect of water vapor, latent heat and clouds actually did present positive feedback, Hurricanes would leave a trail of warmer water behind them, rather than the trail of cold water observed. Of course, the second law also infers that a heat engine can not warm its source of heat, which for the heat engine prodiucing weather, is the surface.

The climate has an external source of energy, the sun, and the surface temperature of the Earth is determined by both the amount of incoming energy and the temperature required to radiate (through a GHG containing atmosphere that reduces effective emissivity) the same amount of energy out again - as per the conservation of energy. Infinite gain isn't required, in fact the climate sensitivity gain is considerably less than 1.0 and hence stable.

Your "half" energy errors were discussed and shown lacking on the SkS threads I referenced earlier.

And as I pointed out above, hurricanes are no counter-example, providing a (relatively) local transport of energy from the sea surface to the atmosphere, cooling that surface. _Local_ phenomena, not _global_; your claim that climate science would predict sea surface warming under a hurricane is a completely fictitious strawman fallacy.

The feedback is not said to be above 100%, or even close to 100%. There is no reason to believe there will be runaway warming; it certainly isn't an ICCP prediction. You are arguing against strawmen. The rest of your drivel is the same crap you were schooled on at SS in 2010. You're now becoming less interesting.

Short version on gain, and CO2isnotevil's claim of tiny gain limits: for a given forcing 'f' and climate sensitivity gain 'g', the forcing amplification 'v' will be:

V = f / (1-g)

For a CO2 doubling sensitivity of ~3C, with a direct temperature increase of ~1.1C, this works out for a gain of ~0.633, less than 1.0 and hence stable. This is discussed at some length here - it's a common denier myth.

The rest of CO2isnotevil/George White's arguments are similarly nonsensical.

where Go is the open loop gain, Gc is the closed loop gain and f is the fraction of the output fed back to the input and can be easily derived from the equations, Gc = Po/Pi a Po = (Pi + f*Po) * Go. But again, this is from Bode and assumes a gain element with effectively an infinite supply of output power.

This can be re-expressed as,

Gc = Go/(1-f)

You made the same mistake as Hansen did in his original paper about climate system feedback (1984) where GHG effects were conceptualized as gain, but called it feedback. Another mistake both he and Schelsinger made in his follow on paper was assiming unit open loop gain, thus Gc = 1/(1-f). In this case, f = 0.375, which is (1 - e), where e is the effective emissivity of the Earth as seen from space. This represents passive and not active gain and it is cauesed by an atmoshere that slows down some fraction of surface emissions, returning about half of them back to the surface. Whether you call this feedback or open loop gain is irelevant, since as you can see from the gain equation, the two can be arbitrarily traded off for each other.

BTW, you should be skeptical of anything you see on SS or RC as they are more often wrong than right whenver it comes to support for CAGW, But like here, the facts of the science disputing CAGW are never oppsed using science, only heresay and when asked for details, they always flounder.

Also, you are correct that the source of input power is the Sun and there is no other source of external power to provide the output power of the model. The sotlar input power is all there is and this (Pi) is consumed to produce the models output power (Po). It's simply the case of a broken feedback model used by consensus climate science.

If you don't like the hurricane example, under what circumstances can the combination of water vapor, latent heat and clouds present the 330% positive feedback required to amplify 1 m^2 of forcing into 4.3 W/m^2 at the surface?

Murphy,

You are correct, there is no runaway warming and I never said there was, my point is that the feedback control theory CAGW is based on requires infinite gain at 100% feedback, which of course is impossible and lends serious doubt about the same theory being applicable to any quantification of the climate system in terrms of gain and feedback.

No one schooled me on RC. All I observed were people who knew a few buzz words and echoed party line rhetoric but fell flat on their face when it came to articulating the science behind the extraordinary claims of CAGW.

You guys think you're right and I'm wrong? I have a way to resolve this. Look at this spreadsheet:

http://www.palisad.com/co2/corrected.xlsx

There are about a dozen equations, most of which are trivial arithmetic, and which does a better job at predicting how the climate responds to change than any GCM ever written, moreover; all of its few parameters can be unambiguously measured or calculated.

If you think I'm wrong, I challenge you to understand the spread sheet well enough to look for errors and then point out where you think the error is that makes it such a good predictor of both the current average surface temperature and the consequence of incremental solar input and incremental GHG absorption.

If you think non EM energy makes a difference, add an offset to add a flux of non EM energy into the atmosephere. You will find that this requires adding an equal and opposite flux returning all of this back to the surface for balance to again be achieved. The reason being that only radiant power is consequential to the radiant balance of the planet.

That shows a lack of understanding. Also, "massive" is a subjective term. Net feedback from clouds isn't fully clear yet, though it's considered likely to be slightly positive. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas and is a positive feedback. Evaporation is pretty well matched by condensation (latent heat) (though over time more water vapour is accumulating in the air as it warms). Other feedback include changes in albedo, for example. Other forcings include aerosols, volcanic eruptions and changes in solar radiation. Overall, greenhouse forcing and feedback is sufficient to cause the global warming observed over the instrumental record, and all the warming since around the middle of last century.

4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions are required for the 0.8C increase claimed from only 1 W/m^2 of forcing. So where is the extra 3.3 W/m^2 of surface emissions coming from? You should agree that this energy must be replenished or else the surface will cool. The pedantic answer is positive feedback supplies it, but you seem to be close to agreeing that the net feedback is close to zero and not the 330% required to amplify 1 W/m^2 up to 4.3 W/m^2. What about the prior 239 W/m^2 of forcing. Did each of them increase surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2? (the test of this is that the surface is not at the boiling point of water). What physics supports an incremental sensitivity higher than the average for all preceeding forcing when the T^4 relationship of Stefan-Boltzmann dictates the exact opposite?

Will you agree that the slope of the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship would be the sensitivity if the Earth's atmosphere contained no GHG's or clouds? This is less than 0.2C per W/m^2. What voodoo science can you present which boosts this up to 0.8C per W/m^2?

Everywhere I look, consensus climate science has errors, inconsistancies and contradictions, yet those of you who need these flaws to support extraordinary claims are blind to them as obvious as they are to an objective observer.

You are very confused CO2isnotevil. In fact I would say you are quite lacking in the understanding of basic Physics. Rambling gibberish that has no basis in reality apart from quoting bits of real science to make it sound real is a total waste of time.Just a guess but your background is electronics and circuit design?I urge you to try and understand this first year uni bit of science. When you understand come back and I may show you more. Bert

I'm likely to be more familiar with radiative physics and absorption physics than you will ever be. Among other things I've done is written a high performance MODTRAN like program based on HITRAN line data which utilized some innovative numerical analysis techniques.

One obvious error in your reference is that the total feedack effect is much less than 33 W/m^2 and not all due to GHG's since 239 W/m^2 of input accounts for reflection from clouds and ice which are also part of the response of the system to forcing. If you back out the effective negative feedback from cloud and ice reflection (funny how the IPCC metric obfuscates this),the post albedo input would be closer to 311 W/m^2 for an effective temperature of 272K and only 16K of 'feedback related' warming.

Another error is characterizing the solid surface of Venus as warm due to the GHG effect. The Venusian surface is no more in equilibrium with the Sun and subject to GHG effects then the solod surface of Earth deep beneath our oceans. Temperatures of both are dependent on the PVT profile of the ocean above, which for Venus is CO2 with a mass about the same as our H2O ocean. Why do you think the interior of a gas giant gets hot? Venus is the same and the reason is gravity.

You just cannot help yourself can you CO2isnotevil. Again you degenerate into drivel. You might have missed the bit that this analysis was simple and had some assumptions.You are doing exactly what I deduced. Analysing a circuit in isolation with no thought of the rest of the Universe is not reality.I am not going to get into a penis size argument about who amongst us has the knowledge or experience. Sou would beat both us on all counts. Bert

No amount of science will convince a denier that climate science is not a hoax or that "scientists don't know nuffin'". When they start claiming that that the IPCC is "hiding" something (in plain sight), and that it's gravity that causes global warming, you know it's not worth the effort.

The hate and fear exhibited is a clear indication that you are worried that your precious CAGW theory is a failure. And you should be because it is. The science is certainly settled, but not in the way you have been fooled into believing.

Not once has anybody here actually tried to support their position or dispute mine with anything that even resembles science. As I predicted, since the science is not on your side, your response consists of ad hom attacks and parroting the junk science pushed by the likes of SS and RC without a clue about what any of it actually means. Its truely amazing how gullible some of you are to actually buy in to the pseudo science pushed by the otherwise unsupportable green agenda, just the IPCC would have no reason to exist without the false fear of CAGW to fool the masses.

Co2, havebyoumstopped to,consider that this is not hate and fear but contempt. There are highly intelligent people who have mastered their subject and who understand the climate system better than any of us who don't have sleepless nights that you might be right. Do you wonder why they think they are right?

Given Co2 has already demonstrated a phobia about Al Gore, he really shouldn't be talking about other people's "hate and fear". He's projecting his own issues onto us.

Personally I don't "hate and fear" people of his kind. I find them laughable when they claim to be able to effortlessly disprove climate science in a few sentences and yet "don't have the time" to write their epoch defining, Nobel prize winning paper.

It is like listening to a 5 year old claiming to be the toughest kid in the playground. Yes dear, you are soooooo hard. Now go away and play with your lego bricks.

Mr. White (co2) reminds me of a guy at a different website who insists that long wave radiation hitting the oceans can't warm them because it only penetrates a few microns. Where does the energy go? He has no answer. Mr. White is a similar kind of D-K clown who knows a few buzz words and echoes party line rhetoric but falls flat on his face when it comes to articulating the science.

IIRC from our previous discussions, you're halving the top of atmosphere (TOA) forcing (utterly misunderstanding MODTRAN outputs, as that forcing is already the _difference_ between incoming and outgoing radiation), using a constant scalar to relate TOA and surface forcing (when that's determined by the atmospheric lapse rate and the local height of the tropopause), not understanding that there is an energy imbalance as long as the TOA values don't match and that the climate will gain/lose energy accordingly until temperatures and emissions negate that imbalance. Your unique math and curve-fitting do not make up for the lack of physics in your arguments.

Now you've thrown in the gravity canard (if adibatic temperatures and thus emissions left the Venus TOA out of balance, the Venusian atmosphere would cool/warm until that was no longer the case - and the 'V' of PV = nRT would change accordingly), invoked conspiracy theories WRT the IPCC, and are continuing to argue for unrealistically short ocean thermal adjustment times.

There is quite frankly little, if anything, correct in your arguments.

You seem quite sincere about your position - but it's simply wrong. You're On occasion lone investigators have overturned the mass of scientific thought - but those occasions are few and far between, with the vast majority simply lacking sufficient background frameworks and fooling themselves with their pet theories. I suggest you reflect upon that.

The IPCC defines forcing as an intantaneous difference at TOA *BEFORE* the system has adapted. In the steady state, forcing is zero.

MODTRAN will compute the change in optical depth that occurs from an instantaneous change in GHG concentrations. This can be translated into a change in the size of the transparent window which corresponds to incremental energy added to or removed from the atmosphere. This is about 3.7 W/m^2 when CO2 is doubled.

The real problenm is that the IPCC defines forcing in an ambiguous manner and this contributes to one of the many factor of 2 errors in the consensus analysis. An instantaneous change in post albedo input power is an instantansous change at TOA and forcing per the IPCC. An instantaneous decrease in the power passing thorugh the transparent window is also considered forcing per the IPCC., but has a significantly different result. The reason is that the atmosphere is transparent to incremental post albedo input power and all of this forcing affects the surface. Only about half of any decrease in the transparent window will be returned to the surface to effect its temperature.

There's no curve fitting involved. It's a top down model based on physical laws with a small number of measureable parameters. The model converges to a unique result across a wide range of conditions which match the satellite data almost perfectly and confirm that the planet acts as a nearly ideal gray body whic temperature is the surface temperature with an emissivity resulting from an atmosphere that slows down some fraction of surface emissions.

I'm sincere about my position because every prediction of the theory has been validated and many 10's of gigasamples of data from satellites further validates it, moreover; every prediction of the consensus theory fails. This is the scientific method, which relative to consensus climate science seems to have been replaced by political correctness conforming to a narrative. A truely sad state of affairs.

The idea that incremental effects are completely orthogonal to LTE effects is another thing that the IPCC's self serving consensus has wrong. Incremental effects are the slope of the change in LTE effects and why this basic tenent of system analysis is beyond most climate scientists is a testament to a significant knowledge deficit about the behavior of causal systems.

Regarding Venus, its solid surface is not in equilibrium with the Sun. The planet is completely enveloped by clouds and its the cloud tops that are in equilibrium with the Sun. Unlike Earth, where the hydro cycle allows us to consider clouds tigtly coupled to the surface through evaporation and rain, Venusion clouds are completely disconnected from its surface comprising a unique thermodynamic system. Are you aware that the bottom KM or so of the Venusian atmosphere is supercritical fluid where CO2 is acting more like a liquid than a gas? One attribute of this is that extreme collisional broadening morphs the CO2 line spectrum into a broad band absorber/emitter in the same way that this occurs during the transition from a gas to an ordinary liquid.

Going forward, I will periodically chech back and addres serious scientific questions, but don't expect to bait me with the typical bombastic rhetoric that characterizes the CAGW side of the debate., Please stick to the science.

BTW, the debate is all about the magnitude of the sensitivty, nothing more and nothing less.

"This can be translated into a change in the size of the transparent window which corresponds to incremental energy added to or removed from the atmosphere. [...] Only about half of any decrease in the transparent window will be returned to the surface to effect its temperature."

* I see a repeat of your 'window' misconception again. Increases in CO2 result in a broadening of all absorption peaks at the tropopause, with only minor changes in the 40 W/m^2 'atmospheric window'.

* The 'halving' you claim is just nonsense - the TOA forcing for doubled CO2 is ~3.7 W/m^2, the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation, not half that.

* Also note that "incremental post albedo input power" is a nonsense term - GHG increases have essentially _no_ effect on insolation, just on outgoing radiation to space.

Your posts and claims Dunning-Kruger writ large - a complex construction based upon fundamental misconceptions about radiative physics and atmospheric energies. I would strongly suggest reading some good references, such as Pierrehumberts Principles of Planetary Climate; you might find them informative.

No. Trenberth has the size of the transparent window wrong. Keep in mind that he is the principle scientist at the IPCC and responsible for insuring that the science doesn't contradict the IPCC's reason to exist (i.e. CAGW).

Line by line simulations show that for the clear sky, about 47% of the Planck emissions from the surface pass into space with no attentuation. Ask Trenberth where he gets 20 W/m^2. I have and he has no answer. Its basically curve fit to what he wanted to see. and I understand why you acused me of curve fitting when you are so used to that from the pseudo-science purporting to support CAGW.

The transparent window comprises those photons that traverse in a straight line from the surface to space at the speed of light. Any photon that doesn't do this is absorbed by either GHG's or clouds and whose energy is eventually either emitted out to space or returned back to the surface. Please tell me what is it about this consequence of physics that you don't get? GHG's and clouds absorb power from half the area across which its emitted. Do you understand why the average solar input is 341.5 W/m^2 and not the 1366 W/m^2 measured at high noon when the Sun is directly overhead in the tropics?

As I've said before, you seem perpetually confused from the obfuscation by Trenberth of conflating energy transported by photons with energy transported by matter., This obfuscation seems to have had the desired result.

Are you trying to say that if the post albedo average input power ot 239 W/m^2 instantaneously increased by 1 W/m^2 that this would not be considered forcing per the IPCC definition? I suggest you go and read the various AR's published by the IPCC. Do you think the output emissions magically increase by 1 W/m^2 or do you think the surface temperature must increase until 1 W/m^2 of new emissions are produced? If this causes a surface temperature increase, how is this different then sensitivity to forcing, as defined by the IPCC?

No. Trenberth has the size of the transparent window wrong. Keep in mind that he is the principle scientist at the IPCC and responsible for insuring that the science doesn't contradict the IPCC's reason to exist (i.e. CAGW).

I'd get that problem checked. The D-K-itis is getting worse by the minute. It's morphing into Tim Ball-itis.

(AFAIK, Kevin Trenberth was a contributing author to one chapter and a review editor of another in AR5. The IPCC WG1 reports science. WG2 and 3 report impacts, adaptation, vulnerability and mitigation. That's all.)

PL,Exactly. So why isn't this true for the atmosphere which captures energy from the surface yet has twice the area over which to re-emit this energy? The same geometrica constraints must apply.

It's nearly impossible to publish anything contradicting the IPCC. We are in an environment that can't handle the truth when that truth makes the careers of hundreds of scientists hell bent on proving the claims of the IPCC meaningless. Unfortunately, this comprises the population of scientists who would 'peer review' the work.

I must correct your misunderstanding, either that or his role is significantly overstated in his bio:

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/

"He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 Scientific Assessment of Climate Change reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which went to the IPCC"

It's not me who is misunderstanding and no, his CV is not overstated. You just don't understand what the various roles are. (Lead authors for each chapter sit under Coordinating Lead Authors of each chapter. Above them are the Co-Chairs etc). I provided the evidence of the role he played in AR5, too.

Kevin Trenberth is one of the world's leading climate scientists. For an unpublished denizen of denier blogs to claim he is "wrong" and you are right, and suggest he is hiding the truth makes you look even more foolish (and worse) than you already appear (if that's possible).

If you want to keep talking, this thread is for you to comment further if you want..There's been enough thread-hogging nonsense on this article.

Have you stopped to consider why this might be so other than to clam some vacuous nonsense about funding or religion? Have you considered it is for the same reason that the nutters who claim to have overturned Einstein don't get published and why creationists and IDers have to use vanity publishing outfits to get theirs published?

Strangely, deniers forget that healthy debate goes on in science all the time.

"...if the post albedo average input power ot 239 W/m^2 instantaneously increased by 1 W/m^2 that this would not be considered forcing per the IPCC definition? [...] Do you think the output emissions magically increase by 1 W/m^2 or do you think the surface temperature must increase until 1 W/m^2 of new emissions are produced? "

I cannot think of a clearer illustration of CO2isnotevil's errors on this thread than the line quoted above. Increasing GHGs do not increase the energy coming into the climate from the sun, they _decrease_ outgoing energy (239->238 W/m^2, for example), leading to a TOA imbalance, leading to warming until the Earth is again emitting 239 W/m^2 to match incoming energy.

"In" is not "Out", George - that's a really fundamental error on your part. Add to that the blatant conspiracy theories - and you are far beyond reason, logic, or science, and IMO evincing crack-pottery.

Actually it is true. Sometimes the captchas are awkward. But, Unknown, it applies to everybody. Or do you think it is some sort of conspiracy? Perhaps you should put on your tin-foil hat so the captcha system cannot detect who you are.

The first several posts I made only required me to check the "I'm not a robot" button. Suddenly a massive captcha was displayed through a tiny window that I had to scroll through and no matter what I did, it kept asking me to prove I was not a robot and flashed another captcha.

At least now, it's only doing one captcha, but when I posted from gmail, it let me post again by only checlking the "I'm not a robot" button. Clearly something changed and probably at a bad time which is why it went into an infinite loop of captchas when I tried to post.

There is also something deficient with this site as firefox (latest firefox and Ubuntu) doesn't seem to run the spell checker on anything entered in the text window.

Re co2isnotevil (g. white): I don't have the background to decipher these statements or find the failings, but here is my question: if White's argument is as good as he claims and proves definitively (as he claims) that climate science is all wrong, then why isn't he publishing this? Lack of time is not an exceedingly flimsy excuse. Something this important should be widely known. The Heartland institute for one should be glad to provide funding while White polishes his argument and article. As far as I'm concerned, failure to pursue publication (peer reviewed or not) is the tip off that the theory and arguments are bogus - which is what the more science-informed commenters here have been arguing right along.

Not to mention that an application to Koch Industries should net him wealth beyond all dreams of avarice from grateful billionaires who will see billions of dollars of fossil fuel assets rescued from the scrapheap, and powerful backers who will make sure his paper receives the widest attention in the media.

So if he believes in what he is claiming there is no explanation for his reticence to publish. And that leaves us with the obvious alternative, which deserves unkind remarks about our new bestest friend.

I've seen deniers pull this nonsense before. He knows his 'great theory' is crap. But he will use the comments from anyone willing to engage with him to refine his crap and make it that bit less obviously craptastic to more naive people. Heck, he even asked us to check his spreadsheet for him. Could he be more obvious?

co2isnotevil said: "It's nearly impossible to publish anything contradicting the IPCC." This is rubbish. There is lots of denialist nonsense (i.e. contradicting the IPCC) published in science journals.

For example: anything by Nils-Axel Morner, Albert Parker (a.k.a. Alberto Boretti), Willie Soon and various other members of the "it's all the sun" brigade, David Douglass and co, and quite a few more.

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All you need to know about WUWT

WUWT insider Willis Eschenbach tells you all you need to know about Anthony Watts and his blog, WattsUpWithThat (WUWT). As part of his scathing commentary, Wondering Willis accuses Anthony Watts of being clueless about the blog articles he posts. To paraphrase:

Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece...(he couldn't tell if it would)... stand the harsh light of public exposure.

Definition of Denier (Oxford): A person who denies something, especially someone who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence.
‘a prominent denier of global warming’
‘a climate change denier’

Alternative definition: A former French coin, equal to one twelfth of a Sou, which was withdrawn in the 19th century. Oxford. (The denier has since resurfaced with reduced value.)